


The Things She Forgot

by MuseofWriting



Series: Without Mercy and Without Blame [2]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Campaign: Balance (The Adventure Zone), Families of Choice, Found Family, Gen, Not Really Character Death, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:29:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23448568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuseofWriting/pseuds/MuseofWriting
Summary: Memories are fragile. They fade and warp and crumble away at the edges, even when they are not eaten by static.
Relationships: Barry Bluejeans & The Director | Lucretia, Davenport & The Director | Lucretia, Magnus Burnsides & The Director | Lucretia, The Director | Lucretia & IPRE Crew | Starblaster Crew, The Director | Lucretia & Lup, The Director | Lucretia & Merle Highchurch, The Director | Lucretia & Taako
Series: Without Mercy and Without Blame [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1684189
Comments: 10
Kudos: 37





	The Things She Forgot

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to tumblr. Fic has been edited since then.
> 
> This is part of a series, but can be read as a one-shot. Series title is taken from _The Chimes_ by Anna Smaill.

Memories are fragile. They fade and warp and crumble away at the edges, even when they are not eaten by static.  
  
*  
  
When they first walk in the door, she thinks her heart might burst out of her chest. She had observed them from afar, of course, but always through reports and spies and magic. She didn’t dare get too close. Seeing them in person again, it was all she could do to stop herself rushing forward to hug them. She could only drink in the sight of them, reminding herself of every detail she had lost in the years away.  
  
Magnus has changed the most out of any of them, a whole decade making itself known on his human body in a way that has not affected Taako or Merle. There’s a new scar that splits his face, right across his eye, presumably from his battle in Raven’s Roost. His shoulders are broader and rounder than they had been at twenty-one, and his muscles sit differently on his bones. Still, her heart thuds at the sight of little things she had forgotten. His sideburns are cut the same way he had kept them for an entire century. He still has that woodworking callus on his thumb. Then he asks her name and she stumbles over her own tongue because she suddenly remembers, clear as day, the sound of a wooden duck hitting the floor, and Magnus’s voice saying _Who are you_ , and she remembers the betrayal that had lingered in his eyes even as his legs went out from under him.  
  
Merle is almost the same, stumpy and inappropriate and waddling after his friends. He’s braided flowers into his beard in a style she hasn’t seen since the sixty-fourth cycle. She didn’t know he’d started doing that again. He absent-mindedly rubs the edge of his hand-axe. She’d forgotten he used to do that when he was thinking, that it always helped him concentrate.  
  
There’s something wrong with Taako, something she can’t quite put her finger on at first. He seems the same— his hair falling out in voluminous waves from under his green pointed hat, his nails perfectly manicured, his mischievous quirk of a smile when he makes a dirty joke at Magnus’ expense. Then he says, “I’m but a simple idiot wizard” and she almost blows her cover then and there as she is startled into correcting him. But Magnus agrees with him, and he insists, and then she sees his eyes. They're unfocused somehow. There is fire missing from inside them.

*  
  
Her memories splintered like plywood, drifting out of context, a hundred years turned into a hundred thousand disjointed moments.  
  
*  
  
“Elderflower macarooooons,” Taako says, waving a plate under her nose. It’s the first time in a decade she’s been offered Taako’s cooking, because she never dared to attend Sizzle It Up. She can’t say no to this, so she picks one up and takes a bite.  
  
“Hot diggity shit,” she says, repressing an outpouring of swears because she’s just been transported back twenty-odd years to a day aboard the Starblaster when Taako and Lup made almost two hundred macarons. She doesn’t remember _why_ – although in all likelihood the reason was _why the fuck not_ – but she does remember Taako chasing her down the hall with levitating trays of macarons, and the distant sound of Lup shouting _Try the lavender ones_ as Barry tried to escape the kitchen. She doesn’t remember what cycle this was, or how they even got their hands on the ingredients, but she remembers the taste of seemingly infinite macarons, and realizes she hasn’t thought about that day since they made the relics.  
  
*  
  
Her memories felt like whisper games, stories retold and drawings retraced until they were nearly unrecognizable.  
  
*  
  
Merle is lounging beside her in a mud bath. She has to stop herself from staring at the stump of his arm. Not because she hasn’t seen him missing limbs before – they all lost an arm or a leg during at least one cycle – but because she’s responsible, and because, if her plan works, there is no reset this time. They told her about Kravitz, bursting into laughter at the absurd notion that they had died eight, nineteen, _fifty-seven_ times, and Lucretia bit her tongue, thinking of her own six deaths. What kind of bounty did that reaper have on her? What would have happened if Kravitz had managed to collect the entire crew’s souls? Would they have been safer if they knew about their past? Could she have saved Merle’s arm?  
  
_Was this how they had lost Lup?_  
  
It’s too late, anyway, and she’s come too far to backtrack now. But she can’t remember the last time she and Merle really talked. There was so little time, in most of those later cycles. There were so many years of broken worlds and the Hunger snapping at their heels, not to mention all the years when Merle went to parlay with John and vaporized in a curl of smoke. So she sits and talks, because this man is like the strange, globe-trotting uncle she never had, with stories she’s never sure whether to believe.  
  
“You gotta stand for something, or you’re gonna fall for anything. So listen! You have got faith; it’s faith in _you_.”  
  
She has to resist throwing her arms around him and burying her face into his shoulder. She’d forgotten so much. She remembered him leaving for parlay with John, and starting the First Church of Fungston, and walking away at the sight of a town drowned by the Gaia Sash, the corpse of a small child floating gently by. But she’d forgotten the real Merle, irreverent, wild-haired, joyous Merle. She’d forgotten the wisdom that spilled from his lips, wrapped in impossibly unconquered optimism. She’d forgotten how much his irreverence was part and parcel of his faith. She’d forgotten how this contradictory bundle of a dwarf could help them all take a step back and remember the joy in their lives. She hadn’t realized how sorely she’d needed his advice these past ten years.  
  
*  
  
She held her most important memories like precious photographs. It was far too easy to lose the infinity of seemingly unimportant ones.  
  
*  
  
The moment the Animus Bell has been taken care of, she orders everyone out. Taako and Merle are waiting in her office, and she needs to go to them, and the Hunger is coming – she’s been seeing the signs for a while now – so she needs to start casting her spell as soon as she can. But first she collapses to the ground. Her legs simply give out from under her, breath shuddering through her body.

She should have known Magnus might not make it out of Wonderland.  
  
That first year, the first world, they’d had a screaming match as Davenport piloted the Starblaster into the next plane, because they couldn’t just _leave Magnus behind_ but _have you seen what’s happening down there, he’s dead, they’re all dead_. And then suddenly Magnus had materialized beside them, looking just as surprised as all the rest of them. She could remember with aching precision the swooping feeling of relief in her gut. She didn’t know Magnus all that well at the time, despite spending some time on the ship with him that year, but he was still one of only six people left from her home world, and she didn’t want to lose him.  
  
Now he was gone for good, and it feels like a piece of her soul has been ripped out. With the Animus Bell _right there_ , she’d felt the thrall of one of the relics for the first time in her life. How easy it would be, to reach out and just take it, just call up one soul, one soul who already had over twenty resurrections on its conscience anyway…  
  
She wishes to every god in every plane that she were Lup, or Taako, or Barry. She wants to hurl fireballs and tear down the walls around her. She wants to rip the entire Bureau up stone by stone. She wants to barrel towards Wonderland in a whirl of pure destruction. She would trade away her time, her eyes, her luck, the hands that had lovingly written each journal, every single memory she had, to bring Magnus back.  
  
She can’t pinpoint the moment the crew of the Starblaster had transitioned from crewmates to friends to family. She remembers one year when Magnus, Taako, Lup, and Barry had all died. Merle had survived the year, but he’d spent the last few months lost deep in a jungle after a failed attempt to recover the Light of Creation. Those months with no one there but Davenport and Lucretia had been painfully quiet. The Starblaster had gotten damaged in their search – which was why they had to abandon Merle – so they had poured all their time into repairing it, finishing with little time to spare before the Hunger came.  
  
As soon as the reset happened, the whole team had gathered into the Starblaster’s living room. Somehow they managed to fit all seven of them on a couch meant at most for four people. Lup curled up on Barry’s lap, arms wrapped tight around his neck, their faces close enough to feel each other’s breath. Magnus picked up Davenport and set him, protesting, on his own lap. Merle tried to crawl onto Taako, who had a brief shoving match with him until Merle finished sitting on the edge of the armrest. Lucretia found herself in the middle. She pulled out a journal and began to read.  
  
At some point, she reached the part where Lup and Taako had been separated from the rest of them, and Lup jumped in eagerly to fill in the blanks. Lucretia wrote at lightning speed, recording everything she had missed. Taako and Lup traded off explaining how they had been killed by a mudslide that buried them too quickly for either of them to fire off a spell. Barry, Magnus, and Merle all spoke up to recount their own adventures and deaths. By the end, they had all traded their stories for the year, and Lucretia’s journals were complete.  
  
She can remember that day with the warm glow of a treasured moment. But she can’t remember when she had become comfortable enough with her crewmates to crowd onto a couch with all of them at once. She can’t remember when she stopped recording their lives because it was her job and started recording them because they were her family. She can’t remember when she started peppering her journals with additions like, “Lup and Taako had to subsist on food they could catch and gather for themselves – of course, Taako’s biggest complaint about this entire arrangement was the lack of spices.”  
  
How many things has she forgotten about Magnus? How many jokes will she never hear again? How much did he learn in their century of travel that she will never know? How long will it take her memory of him to blur at the edges, until she can picture only a vague outline of his face, remember only that his voice was low and gruff, but not the exact sound as he jumped out from behind a rock shouting “MAGNUS!”?  
  
There’s no Animus Bell pulling her into its thrall, but for a moment, she is tempted. There’s a way to fix it, after all. She knows where the Starblaster is. She’s rusty, but she’s sure she could pilot it away.  
  
She could save her family. She could fix Merle’s hand and eye. She could summon Lup from wherever she has disappeared to. She could bring Magnus back, so that she never has to forget the kindness in his eyes.  
  
All it would cost is a world.  
  
*  
  
However much she treasured them, her memories were nothing but shadows dancing on a wall.  
  
*  
  
She bursts into the room with her guards and doesn’t know how to catalogue the feelings that swell in her chest at the sight of Barry Bluejeans. His eyes are clear and she knows that he remembers. He knows exactly who she is and what she’s done.  
  
He looks almost exactly the same. Unlike her and Magnus, Barry has not aged. She’d thought, she’d hoped, that when she’d lost track of him as a lich after the first time, that he had made himself a body, lost his memory, and was living a normal life somewhere, but ever since Magnus, Merle, and Taako told her about the Red Robe in Captain Bane’s office, she realized she’d been wrong. Barry had been hiding from her all this time, probably dropping in and out of bodies constantly. He looks, physically, exactly the same as he did the first day on the Starblaster. The same blue jeans, the same round cheeks and square glasses, the same mole on his jaw. The only thing she doesn’t recognize is the cold fury in his eyes when he sees at her.  
  
If Barry – sweet, nerdy, shy Barry – ever looked at her like that before, she can’t remember it.  
  
*  
  
Her memories were the loneliest place in the world.  
  
*  
  
“Lucretia… what have you done?”  
  
The words make every muscle in her body still. Davenport’s voice is different. It’s not just that he’s saying words other than his name. He’s speaking with purpose. He’s speaking with clarity.  
  
_Lucretia… what have you done?_  
  
Ten years, and even on his best day, he could never say her name.  
  
_Lucretia… what have you done?_  
  
She remembers, abruptly, the first day she ever met Davenport. It was a briefing for the Starblaster mission. They hadn’t even finalized the decision on the crew yet. There were still thirty candidates in the pool. The IPRE only knew that Davenport was definitely the captain. He’d been giving a presentation on the bond engine and the potential risks and rewards of the mission. Starry-eyed, she had stayed back to introduce herself afterward, catching him as he was packing up.  
  
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to keep you, I just wanted to say— well, I think everything the IPRE is doing is so fascinating and it's absolutely an honor to be considered for this mission— I only started here this year, I'm so flattered I made it this far. I just wanted to say, even if it’s not for this mission, it would be an honor to work with you in the future, sir.” Davenport had turned, his smile gentle and his eyes kind.  
  
"Seniority is not necessarily a determining factor. We’re most interested in exactly the kind of passion you’re talking about.”  
  
“Thank you, sir,” Lucretia had said. She was shaking with nervousness, but elation made her feel like she was floating on a cloud.  
  
“What did you say your name was?”  
  
“Oh— um. Lucretia. From the Chronicler department.” Davenport had stuck out his hand to shake hers.  
  
“Lucretia. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”  
  
She realizes with a hammer to her heart that she must have met her entire family that day. Magnus, Merle, Taako, Lup, and Barry must all have been in that room with her. They must have all said their names in the brief little ice-breaker. She wonders if they remember seeing her, meeting her, for the first time. Except for Davenport, she doesn’t know when she first talked to any of them. She can’t remember the first words she said, or the first time she met their eyes.  
  
_Lucretia… what have you done?_  
  
*  
  
Her memories were her comfort, wrapping her in borrowed warmth and safety, a brief reprieve from an unforgiving present.  
  
*  
  
“You’re DATING THE GRIM REAPER?”  
  
She’s had her world rocked so many times today already that the sight of Lup almost breaks her. The protection spell flickers for an imperceptible instant before she returns to channeling it. Nothing, not even Lup’s return, can distract her now. But still, it knocks the breath out of her to hear Lup’s voice again. The vestiges of her flames are vanishing into the room, their heat dissipating. She’s forgotten how _powerful_ Lup is, how she can swoop in and set the entire world on fire, both literally and figuratively.  
  
She had looked. She had never stopped looking, not really. When Taako had appeared with Lup’s umbra staff, she hadn’t known what to think. When she’d heard about Kravitz, she thought she’d found her answer, as much as it pained her. But still, even as she gathered the relics and started to see the Hunger’s scouts appear, she still quietly asked all her seekers to keep an eye out for a certain elvish woman. Just in case.  
  
She had hoped she had been doing Taako and Barry a favor, trying to let them forget Lup. But the sheer rage and despair in their eyes told her differently. There had been nights when she closed her eyes and let herself pretend she was still on the Starblaster. She had drifted back to memories of happier times and lived in them for a little while.  
  
Taako and Barry had had nothing in their past but static.  
  
*  
  
Her memories were persistent, sometimes torturously so, smashing her back 20 or 50 or 85 years without warning from nothing more than the smell of Merle's cologne or the sight of Taako's smile or the sound of Magnus whistling while he carved. But they were still just memories.  
  
*  
  
Magnus catches her in a hug, and she sags against him. And then Merle has joined him, Magnus lifting him one-armed to let him reach around her shoulders. And then Lup is there, and Lup is forgiving her, her incorporeal hand brushing along Lucretia’s back. She can’t feel it, but where Lup is, she raises goosebumps on her skin.  
  
It’s not everyone. Davenport stands by the ship, conflict clear in his face. Magnus is motioning to Taako, but he’s planted himself away from her. His eyes still go hard when he looks at her. Where they were once missing fire, it has been replaced with crystal, hard and unforgiving. Barry comes over and stands close, next to Lup, but he doesn’t quite reach out to Lucretia. His too-young face stays still, betraying nothing.  
  
But it’s enough. Her family is here, reunited, and for the first time in over a decade, they are truly working together again. And she realizes, as her heart strains inside her chest, that she had forgotten what it feels like not to be alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! Comments give me life and joy and happiness :D
> 
> Come find me:  
> tumblr: [@thatgirlonstage](https://thatgirlonstage.tumblr.com)  
> twitter: [@MuseofWriting](https://twitter.com/MuseofWriting)


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